Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79. | | | | Holland: Amsterdam | | To the Directors of Amsterdam in Their New Stadthouse | | Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687) |
| | Translated by John Bowring
ILLUSTRIOUS men! who bade the world’s eighth wonder rise, | |
| Lifting its crown of stone sublimely to the skies; | |
| Whose splendid walls are reared by skill’s unerring hand, | |
| To use, the end, the source of all that ’s rich and grand; | |
| May God, who gave you power to mingle good with show, | 5 |
| Within that stately pile his favoring smiles bestow, | |
| That ye to all the world may prove what men ye are; | |
| And peace be ever there, and misery banished far. | |
| But if it be ordained, when years have rolled away, | |
| That e’en these marble walls must crumble and decay; | 10 |
| And if it be by Heaven, in future times, decreed, | |
| That to your wondrous work another must succeed,— | |
| May God, your fathers’ God,—may God, your children’s father, | |
| Beneath his shadowing wings those children kindly gather, | |
| And give them an abode, when ye from earth have past, | 15 |
| As much excelling this as this excels the last! | | | | |
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